


Sweet Music

by StrivingArtist



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bilbo Dies, Bilbo dies AU, Heartsongs AU, Insanity, M/M, No nice things for Thorin, Poetic, Thorin-centric, dwarven headcanons, lots of pain, stylized
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 00:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4283931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrivingArtist/pseuds/StrivingArtist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dwarves hear heartsongs in their dreams. They also hear melodies sung by the treasures of the earth and each has one that calls to them to make it their life's craft.<br/>Thorin had long since despaired of of finding the keeper of his heartsong, and in the desolation after the loss of Erebor, no longer even has gold to ease the ache.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Music

**Author's Note:**

> This started from one of the Bilbo Dies AUs on tumblr that called to me. It then grew sideways into this. 
> 
> FAIR WARNING: THIS IS NOTHING LIKE _OH, SON OF A ----- >_  
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _kurdubnan : greatest treasure of the heart_

Gold sings to dwarves.

  
They are creatures of music, more than any other people in Arda. Most do not know how they resonate with a thrum no one else can hear. Most would never expect that they had an eternal melody surrounding them in every step of their life, reinforced and harmonized with the treasures they kept.

  
Like the stars to the elves, or the land to the hobbits, the treasures of the earth sing in glorious harmony with the music in a dwarf’s heart. It is not only gold that sings, though it does sing the clearest. Mithril laments the past pain of the dwarves in a haunted lilting melody, it brings an ache to the hearts of those that hear it’s song beneath the moon. Silver is the light laughing notes of children, bubbling and bright with all the hope of a greater day on the morrow. Iron sings war songs of victory and righteous blood. Marble and granite hum low, pierced at times by bell-like notes. Each gem has its own call, from the deep rumbling passion of fire opals to the high clean arias of sapphires, emeralds and diamonds.

  
Gold.

  
Gold sings a song of history, of the lives they have lived and the pains they have overcome. It sings of life and death and the greatest deeds of their people. It sings of possibility and power and weaves a story of future into into its rhythm. It calls to them.

  
For the line of Durin, nothing calls louder. That song echoes in their breast from adolescence and for those that sing back to it, it is overwhelming. It can rise and build to a symphony of bliss and the dwarf in question can drown beneath waves of sweet music.

  
This is the curse of the line of Durin.

  
The dragon Smaug was called down on Erebor as much by the gold as by the song that followed Thror in his every step. It is an inescapable beacon. And why would any wish to resist something so unattainably beautiful?

  
The elves believe that dwarves would happily exchange everything in their lives for the same but wrought in gold.

  
But for all that the elves have lived long and seen much, they cannot understand.

 

* * *

 

Thorin Oakenshield had known since he first heard the faint strains of music in his dreams that somewhere in the world, there was a soul that would sing to his own like no other. Each evening when the burdens of his life grew too heavy to bear for another moment, he would rest his eyes in peace, comforted by the song that would rise to greet him. It was wound about him tighter than any armor, and served to keep him afloat in the horror his life became after the Dragon came.

  
It kept him moving when his people were brought low, reviled and spat upon as they wandered helpless under unforgiving open skies. It reminded him of the promise of the future when Azanulbizar stole his father, his brother and his king in a single day. It kept alight his soul when the inexorable weight of ruling pressed him into sandy earth on the dying shores beneath the Blue Mountains.

  
After hearing it each night for more than a century, he despaired of ever finding its keeper.

  
Maybe the one with that soft warm voice had been lost to the dragon’s fire, and what he heard was only an echo. Maybe they were one of the dwarves who had wandered away from the others, seeking refuge in the halls of the distant clans.

  
Maybe they did not exist.

  
Maybe Mahal had erred.

  
Maybe Mahal did not care.

  
So Thorin continued, and though he had long since abandoned hope that he would ever meet the one who kept his heartsong in their chest, he could not help greeting his sleep with a gentle smile.

  
False or not, lost or not, it warmed him to hear it.

  
Hearing a heartsong was no guarantee, as every dwarf knew. Not a guarantee to find them. Not a guarantee they lived. Not a guarantee they would love you in return.

  
Simply a comfort.

  
And a knowledge of something missing so deep inside them that no other balm could fill it.

 

* * *

  
It is a cruelty in the heartsongs of dwarves that they only make themselves known when the dwarf hears their other half sing.

  
Extraordinary pain and longing could be avoided if a heartsong rolled smoothly in a person’s mouth, casting reflections of itself into speech. There it could be easily heard, easily noticed, easily embraced.

  
Many dwarves sing while they work at their crafts. It is as natural as breathing. Just as an ingot of silver beneath their tool sings in dulcet tones, they sing in return. And try as they may to keep their heartsong private, they cannot help but bring strains of it out when the earth’s wonders set a tremble their flesh with a certainty no other race can comprehend.

  
When speaking of such things to outsiders, dwarves will say that by the time they come of age, they have chosen a craft to master. They do no such thing.

  
By the time a dwarf has reached a majority, they have seen and touched every precious wonder of their people, and heard one answer their song. Even those dwarves that took up roles as scribes and cooks and warriors heard an answer, though not so strongly that they had no choice but to follow it. Every dwarf has a kurdubnan.

  
For them, since they could not find peace in working with their kurdubnan every day, talismans were made. Perhaps a disc of mithril set in leather that could be worn over the heart beneath a warrior’s armor. At times a marble desk for a scholar to sit at for their studies. From time to time, a fine tipped pen with a band of emeralds where their fingers grip.

  
They were simple ways of keeping the dwarf in contact with what they would otherwise long for with every breath.

  
With the fall of Erebor, and desolation of the Longbeards, these were the last tokens held by families. They were the last holdout as they sold every precious thing they owned to stave off starvation. Jewelry and finery was parted with reluctantly at first, but as the years stretched on, it be became easy to let go of status symbols that no longer mattered.

  
When Thorin was first told in the aftermath of Azanulbizar that a family had sold their kurdubnan tokens to purchase rice and grain, something broke inside him. He vowed it would not happen again, and brought what he could, trying to replace them. A gold pin was substitute for the father’s pendant. A raw ruby satisfied the son.

  
The daughter’s heart sang for mithril.

  
There was nothing he could do.

  
He thought there was no misery greater than the broken note of her voice in the tent he walked away from that night.

  
As he so often was, in this he was wrong.

  
Their hungry defenseless march towards the illusory hope of Ered Luin killed many, and the despair of waking each day, knowing they had no hope of working their kurdubnan again killed even more.

  
Everyone knew that the mines of the Blue Mountains were empty save for tin and iron and rare finds of gems.

  
Everyone knew they would continue to dwindle there, a forgotten people deprived of everything that they held dear.

  
The day Thorin realized he had accepted this fate, he learned how deep the well of pain in his heart could go. Had he not closed his eyes that night and been wrapped in a warm humming melody, he would not have had the strength to wake again.

 

* * *

 

Though they protested it as folly, as dangerous, as more optimistic than any of the Longbeard clan should ever be, no one believed that Thorin would not attempt to retake Erebor when the Wizard presented him with a shard of possibility. It had been too long, and the road to indignity too taxing for him not to grasp tight the opportunity to give his people hope once more.

Of those few that were willing to come with him many came to ease the pain of a lost kurdubnan. Not always for themselves, but for a son, or a cousin who was fading, unable to work with the medium that their maker had tied them to. Slowly losing sight of their calling.

  
The rest came because they could see it in his eyes, in his gait, and in the slump of his shoulders, that he would do this thing, even if it cost his life. Those nearest to him knew that he had abandoned hope of hearing the music of his dreams answered in this life. It had been too long. He believed they were lost to him as surely as the gold he ached to touch. But their loyalty never wavered. Not even when he sold his last trace of gold. Not even when he sold his nephews’ tokens.

  
Folly it may have been, but the quest was, for Thorin at least, the only path remaining. No dwarf could take their own life and enter the halls of their forebears with honor. Should he die in valiant struggle trying to reclaim his homeland however, there could be no trace of shame.

 

* * *

 

Thorin knew the moment he saw the hobbit that the quest had no place for him.

How could it?

Too frail, too hopeful, too gentle.

He could not withstand the abuse of what they would face, and would be of no use to them.

He knew this at his core.

Bilbo Baggins should not be with them.

As they travelled the hobbit talked on and on about his longing for home; for the gentle sun of the Shire. For the pleasing glow of a fireplace. For the sweet taste of honey in his tea. It bothered him like an itch he could not reach.

Always present.

Always a reminder.

All the same he found himself drawn into the creature, fascination and longing combined as he heard someone talk of what he did not have.

There was no contentment in his heart, but as Bilbo spoke each day of Bag End and of fields and streams and growing things, it was as if he could borrow a scrap of it to ease the place inside him that would never be filled.

He thought at first that there might be a hope there. That the draw he felt to the hobbit might mean something more, but the first time he heard the hobbit sing around the campfire, it was crushed. There was no flash of brightness. No resonant echo in his chest. It was nothing like the song he heard in his dreams. A note, perhaps, a general ambiance, but not enough.

Perhaps it was better that way. If Bilbo held his heartsong he was not sure he could have allowed the hobbit to continue. The risk of losing him would have been a preoccupation in his every waking moment, and not even the reassurance of his song in his ears would be enough to keep him calm.

It was better this way.

 

* * *

 

 

After the mountains. After the cliff. After Azog. After the Carrock. While they recovered at the skinchangers home.

Thorin had resolved to take better care of the hobbit. He was soft, yes, but hidden inside was an unexpected strength. He had lost the drive to push him away, and found that the itch of preoccupation remained. Not understanding, he had sought the hobbit’s company more and more.

So it was he that went to retrieve Bilbo from the stream to keep him from missing supper.

The sun was warm, the air broken by nothing more dangerous than the chirp of birds and insects. Bilbo was washing out the filth from his clothes, dressed in his spares. Light glinted in clean curls and the water sparkled as he wrung water from the shirt in his hands.

And he sung softly to himself.

Hardly even a tune.

Just the idle rhythm of his heart as he enjoyed a moment of peace in the peril Thorin had dragged him out his door to face.

It echoed in a way that defied nature.

Thorin could not walk. He could not breathe. But then, why would he need to? Why would he want to when he was hearing his heartsong for the first time?

He let it flow over him, a sweet music that filled him with a brightness he could never have imagined. It ran in rivers down his limbs, setting his flesh to tingle and his heart to pound. His chest constricted at the change, almost seeming to burst, and a white hot thrum, an echo of the hum in Bilbo’s throat chased the cold sparks to the tips of his fingers.

He could not help but smile.

How long he stayed there, caught in the thrall of the unwitting hobbit, he could not say. It was a lifetime for him, but as no one came to find them, could not have been long for the rest of the world.

When Bilbo turned, abruptly aware of his presence, the song cut off, and became self conscious. If he spoke, or inquired after Thorin's presence, the dwarf did not hear it. Thorin knew that only dwarves heard songs in their sleep. Bilbo did not know what had just swept over Thorin. It was not something they spoke of with outsiders.

He should have stopped to explain.

He should have talked about the ancient melodies sung before Mahal’s hammer fell and split them in twain. Bilbo stepped closer though, laundry abandoned on a branch. For all that his brow creased in concern, his lips curved up just a bit.

Nearly two hundred years alone, holding to that melody and thinking he would never hear it. Decades without even gold to work and ease his hollow chest.

Thorin had been bereft for so long that he did not think before his hand raised, brushing over Bilbo’s cheek and tucking a curl behind his ear. It was reverential, disbelieving. It was a prayer as much it was a devotion.

“Thorin?” Bilbo’s voice was tender, and the memory of the song was strong enough to pluck at the chords in his heart.

His hand trailed down over his throat with all the gentleness in the world. Then up, so light as he traced Bilbo’s jaw that the hobbit shivered, and closed his eyes with a long exhale. He spread his hand over his cheek, cradling it, still too stunned to say a thing. Bilbo’s hand brushed against his wrist for a moment, then mirrored the gesture.

Engulfed in a pleasant hum that settled the ever-present longing in his chest, he would have stayed there til the moon rose and dinner was long forgotten.

Bilbo’s eyes flashed with the same determination he had seen a dozen times before speaking so passionately about his home. The hobbit pulled him down into a kiss as sweet as honey, as warm as the sun, and as grounding as the earth itself. There was no option but to reply in kind. Cautious at first, they kissed innocently, hardly more than a pressure against each other. Thorin drew Bilbo’s lower lip between his own, lightly pulling at it, wishing he could share the sense of perfect union he felt.

It was instinct alone that followed Bilbo’s lead later that night, seated by a fire, lost in the quiet of the night and the heat of the other’s mouth.

* * *

  
“There is no other choice, Thorin. More so, this is why I am on this quest. This is why I am here, and I will not back out now, not after all that we have survived to find ourselves at this place.” Bilbo raised his jaw impudently at Thorin as he so often did. There would be no arguing with him anymore.

It should have frustrated him as it had at the beginning of their quest. The spark of defiance should have riled his temper. But now, feeling more alive than he had since the dragon came? Since he had to watch his people fall into ruin? It only made him smile.

Bilbo made him smile.

“I can do this and I will. None of you lot can manage it. And I’ll not see you risk yourself trailing after me. So stay here, and stay safe.”

He had listened as Thorin told him the old myths, ones that dwarves hear at their mother’s skirts, and embraced it all. There was nothing like heartsongs amongst hobbits, but he honored it.

He also confessed that the little song he sung was one he had never heard before, just a little something he had assumed came from his childhood. He had sung it all his life when he was alone.

It was never something he had wanted to share.

“I love you Thorin, and you are the only home I’ll ever need. But you need your home back, for yourself and for your kin. It was taken from you, and I swore to help you take it back if I could.”

Bilbo had saved them time and again. Azog and spiders and Elves and the barrels on the river. A child of the kindly west, but as strong as any of Mahal’s children.

He had to trust him once more.

“And if you insist on worrying, just close your eyes and listen, and you’ll hear me sing to you until I return.”

If anyone in Arda could be trusted to pilfer a sacred stone from a dragon’s hoard, it was the cheeky hobbit beaming up at him.

“I will always return.”

So he had let him go.

“I love you.”

So he followed when the mountain shook.

The treasury was a cacophony of sound, obliterating his will for a time. The bright bell of gems clashed against the somber notes of carven stone. The mithril’s lament was discordant with the happiness of the silver. Above it all, loud and thrumming with delight to hear its song echo against Thorin’s Durin blood, the gold was overwhelming.

How could anyone resist?

A people’s history roared in his mind. The glory of the dwarves. Their victories. Their heroes. The losses that had brought them low. The promise of a future brighter than any they had seen.

It was their lineage laid open. It was their story, their right, their divine gift from their creator.

All dwarves heard when gold sang.

The line of Durin had no choice but to listen.

He should have noticed sooner that Bilbo’s song fit into the grander threads of gold’s lay like a gem in its setting. They completed each other. They harmonized and called and answered inside him. Had Smaug not come, he could have stayed there forever, awash in the shuddering vibration of the chorus. Bilbo had tried to drag him away, but was not strong enough. The dragon’s presence snapped the string of it, and brought his head above the flood once more.

They ran.

The plan was uncertain. It was hope. He would never have thought it could work if he had not heard Bilbo singing by the stream that day. He would never have thought that luck would favor a Longbeard. They had no other plan though. No option or avenue.

Bilbo stood beside him and heard the plan form, nodding agreement and questioning what was unclear. The others stepped away to strip off armor and weapons that would do no good against the wyrm. Bilbo stepped closer, rest his head against Thorrin’s chest and hummed a few notes. The song suffused him. Centered him. He could hear the gold of the treasury answer, and smiled in contentment.

They ran again. They taunted. They chased.

They got the forges lit, and life seemed too bright. Thorin felt like his blood was aflame as he goaded the dragon into making mistakes.

Gold sang a glorious air, and Smaug was as helpless as any dwarf to resist it’s call.

The plan would work.

Thorin stood atop the stone mold, chain in hand, and heart pounding. The gold below him encouraged him, singing of the power of Mahal’s children. Singing of a bright future.

Smaug taunted Bilbo, and turned to leave, but could not abandon the need to destroy the dwarves. Thorin gave the command. Chains were pulled. He shot higher as the mold came apart.

Smaug was entranced.

How could he not be? A nation’s wealth in gold was shining at him. Beckoning to him. Snaring him. Even as the heat at the center reached the exterior, even as the features of Thror buckled,

Smaug was in the gold’s thrall.

The power and symbol of the dwarves. The divine gift of their maker. It popped and rippled as the statue collapsed. It fell like a waterfall for a moment; thicker, but flowing over the wyrm, engulfing him, swallowing him.

Thorin watched it with all the rapt obsession Smaug had held for the statue.

He was a Durin.

When gold sang, every fiber of his being answered.

Piercing through the rapturous song was a voice that at once resonated and clashed with the song of the molten metal.

The heir of the line of Durin looked up to see the keeper of his heartsong standing in the hall.

He could not save him.

He screamed.

It did not matter.

As waves of gold swallowed the firedrake and subsumed his darkness in the bright history of his people, they bore down upon the terrified form of a child of the kindly west. Had there been a way, Thorin would have taken it. Had there been a trade to make, he would gladly have accepted his fate.

There was none.

For a brief moment as molten gold consumed him, Bilbo seemed to be a statue. A work of art. His hands were reaching up to Thorin, and he was frozen in a yearning stretch.

It was beautiful.

It was sickening.

His arms stretched, his form longed.

His face was caught in a rictus of agony, a reflection of a scream that never sounded. The sight burned into Thorin’s mind, a last frantic effort to hold onto Bilbo betrayed by the fear and pain that tainted the beauty of the pose.

Then he was gone.

The gallery was silent. Still. Nothing moved but the light bouncing from the surface of the gold as it settled to a smooth mirror, filling the gallery with an idle glow of light.

Elves believed that dwarves would happily exchange everything of value in their lives for the same, but wrought in gold.

They did not understand.

 

* * *

  
The gold had not killed Smaug.

The dragon erupted from the pool a moment later, shrieking and deafening and vanishing into the night. He destroyed Laketown with gluts of flame. He fell to an archer who had all the luck that had abandoned the dwarves.

The gold still covered the gallery.

By the time the dragon crashed into the lake, the constellations of spattered gold on the walls and floor of the room were cooled.

By the time the dwarves returned from the ruins on the hill, bringing news of Smaug’s demise, the vast pool had cooled as well.

There they found their king, lost in his own mind, staring into the mirror’s gleam of flawless gold.

Hidden behind walls as they had been, they did not know what had happened. It took the plaintive keening of the king as he crumpled to make them look for their last member. The broken sob of a broken heart confirmed their fear.

Then he started trying to dig.

 

* * *

  
They found him there again in the morning.

And again the next.

They drew him away each time. Brought him back to a soft quiet space and placed food in his hands. He did not eat it unless they guided him. He did not speak, only hummed a few notes at a time, then faded back into silence for hours.

It was different in the gallery. There he sang it all, a low bass chant the others had never heard, but recognized at once.

They hoped when Mahal smiled on them and brought back the rest of the company, hale and cheering, that it might draw Thorin from the darkness of his mind.

It did.

Not in the way they wished.

 

* * *

  
Thorin could still hear the song in his dreams. Bilbo’s kind voice still sang and brought out a sense of home and hope and joy in him.

He was still there.

His voice had fit so smoothly into the sweeping ballad of gold. It had harmonized. The gold had never overwhelmed it, only enhanced the hobbit’s song. The gold would never overwhelm him.

He was still there.

He just had to get him out.

No one would listen. No one would help. But he could hear the song within the gold. He knew.

His nephews appeared with dramatic tales and a smell of smoke. They tried to take him away from the gallery. They wanted to discuss sending gold to Laketown.

Thorin snapped at them. They were too young, too rash, too innocent. They did not understand, could not understand. Gold was the sacred right of their people. It was a heritage and a gift. It sang. Every scrap of gold in the mountain, worked or raw, held notes of the song of their people.

He ordered the them to help. They refused. They pleaded and wept, dragging on him, wrenching him to his feet to shout and shake him.

They begged, faltered.

They let him be.

Thorin sank to the floor once more. Bathed in the light that filled the room, he traced a finger over the face he could see in the gold. He knew where Bilbo was. The moment he entered the gallery, without needing to open his eyes, he could tell. He was drawn to the source of the sunlight song.

How could he not be?

Sweet notes greeted him in his sleep each night. The strains of the kind song were as loud now as they had ever been. They were unchanged. They still merged with the melody of the gold that cocooned him away from the strident complaints of his companions, of his kin. His heartsong still rang in his mind and his soul.

He could see divots in the smooth surface of the floor. No tools, not for this. He could not risk hurting Bilbo with a hit from a pick or a shovel. Firm and questing, his fingers traced the face he saw time and again. The ring of golden bells hung in the air around him and danced below a sharp trilling and the patient beat it carried. A new song. It held strains of his heartsong and bled into the familiar story told by gold. Bilbo’s song responded to it. Louder now.

He drew his fingers over the face in the gold below, straining towards him through the ruts dug by a thousand passes. He marveled as the gold drank up this new chorus. He smiled as Bilbo’s song beat louder with it. He revelled.

The new song pounded through scarlet notes and limned a face in the floor below him.

Bilbo was still there. As long as he could hear the sweet music of his heartsong, as long as he was filled with the glow of gold and love, he would know he had plenty of time.

He just had to get him out.

He crooned along with the chorale.

And he slowly dug.

 

**Author's Note:**

> hides.
> 
>  
> 
> [Archnemeton made fanart!](http://archnemeton.tumblr.com/post/123547216416/super-quick-art-because-i-could-not-get-this-scene)


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